From the motor vehicle sector, it is known to use control units to control and/or regulate various operational sequences in a motor vehicle. The operational sequences to be controlled or regulated include, for example, the operation of an internal combustion engine (torque control, speed control, injection period control, etc.), of a steer-by-wire system, of a brake-by-wire system or of other X-by-wire systems, the operation of safety-related functions (vehicle-stability control systems, antilock systems for the brakes, anti-slip control, active steering systems, active shock absorber systems, etc.), as well as comfort and convenience functions (air-conditioning, electrical seat adjustment, mirror actuation, or steering-wheel adjustment, electrical power-window control, sliding sunroof, etc.).
As the complexity of operational sequences to be controlled or regulated increases, so does the complexity of the computer programs that are run on the control units for carrying out the control and, respectively, regulating functions, which ultimately also leads to higher demands on the control unit hardware. In particular, to fulfill the control and, respectively, regulating functions, it is necessary to process an ever increasing amount of sensor signals that are made available by sensors via inputs to the control unit. However, the number of inputs of one control unit is limited. For that reason, to render possible the control and/or regulation of advanced, complex operational sequences, the need exists to develop and market control units having a larger number of inputs. However, it is a complex and cost-intensive process to develop new control units. Such new developments would make available more diverse control units, but would decrease the number of individual control units, so that additional costs would likewise be entailed for control units.
However, in the motor vehicle sector, in particular, low costs and associated standardized components, as well as high piece numbers are vitally important to the competitiveness of components.
Today, conventional standard control units already have plugs with fewer terminals than would actually be required for complex operational sequences in motor vehicles. However, for the reasons described above, new control units having plugs with more terminals will not be made available in the foreseeable future. Thus, it is essential to discover other ways for controlling and/or regulating advanced, complex operational sequences using standard control units.
From the information technology sector, it is known to interlink a plurality of computers (for example, so-called PCs, personal computers) via a data-transmission medium to a computer system. The data-transmission medium can be a wireless link, an optical connection or a wire-based connection. Data and information can be transmitted via the data-transmission medium in accordance with user-defined protocols. Various computer programs having different functions are run on the computers of such distributed computer systems. The sequences on the individual computers are coordinated by a higher-level unit or by a computer (so-called master) of the computer system. For this purpose, it is possible for the master to transmit synchronization information via the data-transmission medium to the other computers (co-called slaves). The distributed computer systems make possible a greater computing capacity with respect to computing power and memory capacity, and they are characterized by substantial flexibility. In this context, the larger number of inputs and/or outputs of the computer system as compared to individual computers is unimportant. Moreover, input signals incoming at one computer of the computer system are not necessarily required at other computers as well and are, therefore, also not transmitted by the one computer to the remaining computers. This is because various computer programs requiring, as a rule, different input signals are run on the computers.